ARLINGTON, Texas – All week, Shabazz Napier was asked about the Connecticut team of 2011, the team that rumbled through the NCAA Tournament. He was a freshman on that team, as old as the five players in Kentucky blue joining him Monday for the opening tipoff in the national championship.

He could not compare them; the teams, he said, were just different, but Napier at least had a frame of reference.

Connecticut was the anti-Kentucky, with two seniors and two juniors in its starting lineup, players who affirmed their loyalty through conference realignment and sanctions and postseason bans. They stayed, and they were rewarded Monday night, with another title, improbable as that would have seemed three weeks ago.

The final score was UConn 60, Kentucky 54, a fourth title for the Huskies in a championship game that featured the two lowest seeds in NCAA history. Connecticut, a No. 7 seed, denied the eighth-seeded Wildcats’ five freshman starters a championship, just as Duke denied Michigan’s freshman quintet in 1992.

Napier led the Huskies with 22 points, and Ryan Boatright, his fellow dynamo in the backcourt, added 14, despite playing for part of the second half with an injured ankle. James Young paced Kentucky with 20.

“Honestly, I want to get everyone’s attention right quick,” Napier said after the game in an on-court interview. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at the hungry Huskies. This is what happens when you ban us.”

Just being here resonated for UConn coach Kevin Ollie, who in his second season, and first postseason, had presided over a renaissance. He was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, about 20 miles east, and was coaching his team — his alma mater — in the stadium that hosts his beloved Cowboys.

His counterpart, John Calipari, praised Ollie in defeat: “He’s a former athlete there, coming back and winning a national championship”

“I hate losing,” Calipari added, “but I’m happy he won.”

Kentucky never led, but it felt like that would happen, especially when Young threw down a vicious dunk over Amida Brimah, igniting the pro-Kentucky crowd into hysteria. Still, UConn never wavered, and it ended Kentucky’s streak of 11 NCAA tournament wins, a run bookended by losses to the Huskies.

Most other years this title-game matchup, between two storied programs, could have been anticipated. Every tournament features a slew of upsets, but then the upsets stop. Not this year. The upsets kept coming, with contender after contender blitzed by UConn and Kentucky, underdogs in seed only.

Both teams said they felt slighted and were far better than their seeds: just watch. A crowd of 79,238 saw UConn do what no team before it in this tournament had, fend off the Kentucky charge. Trailing by as many as 15 points in the first half, the Wildcats drew to within one point — at 48-47, with 8:13 remaining — but it could never take the lead.

Their baskets were more forceful, dunks and more dunks, but Connecticut kept responding. A patient lay-in by DeAndre Daniels, with 2:47 left, extended the Huskies’ lead to 58-52.

The Wildcats’ season turned in early March, on a so-called tweak implemented by Calipari, one which he has refused to divulge. Perhaps that tweak boosted a team that had not won more than five consecutive games all season to five straight — the last four against championship-caliber teams, by a total of 11 points — in the tournament caldron.

The last time a team embarked on a streak this impressive, Kentucky was also involved, when it became the third No. 1 seed dismissed by Arizona en route to the 1997 title.

With each victory, Kentucky refuted the criticism of Calipari’s recruiting style, cycling in freshmen for one-year stopovers before they depart for NBA riches. The strategy did not work last season, when Kentucky imploded before losing in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament, but it did two years ago.

Kentucky came up just short this year because Connecticut neutralized Julius Randle and the vaunted Harrison twins, Andrew and Aaron, holding them to 15 total points.

Again and again this tournament, Kentucky fell behind by at least nine, stormed back, and then was rescued late by an Aaron Harrison 3-pointer from the left wing. That exit strategy worked against Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin, but Connecticut was different.

Different because of Napier and Boatright, who dissected Kentucky, accounting for 21 points as the Huskies built a 33-18 lead, their largest of the first half, while playing, as usual, smothering defense. In their semifinal victory against Wisconsin, the Wildcats committed only four turnovers. In the first 14 minutes Monday, they had six.

“If you’ve been watching us for the past three years, you know that we’ve got a lot of heart,” Boatright said. “And we ain’t going to back down from nobody.”

Then, though, Phase 2 of Kentucky’s plan went into effect: the comeback. It was aided by one part UConn foul trouble, which sidelined Boatright and Daniels for the final 4:19 before halftime, and one part defensive adjustment, with Calipari switching to a zone. The change flustered Connecticut and rejuvenated Kentucky, whose 16-5 closing run — fueled by two 3-pointers from Young and one by Andrew Harrison — narrowed the deficit to 35-31 at halftime.

But Kentucky caught up.

“We miss some shots we needed to make and some free throws,” Calipari said, “but these kids aren’t machines, they are not robots, they are not computers.”

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